The Santa Ana winds of Southern California are sometimes called the “Devil Winds.” They pick up in the late summer and early fall, sweeping down from the mountains and across the coast. They’re hot and dry, and known for creating dangerous fire conditions.
In late November of 1980 — as the Santa Anas blew in at up to 90 miles an hour — an unknown arsonist lit a fire near Panorama Point in the San Bernardino Mountains. Pushed by the wind, the fire grew and quickly spread down the mountain toward the city of San Bernardino.
In just a few hours, the Panorama Fire destroyed hundreds of homes and killed four people. It was one of the worst wildfire disasters in California history at the time, which sent one man off on a mission to try and change the way we address wildfires.
Jack Cohen was a few years out of graduate school, and a recent transplant to California at the time of the fire. He was working as a research scientist for the Forest Service, studying fire behavior, and he was interested in how the Panorama fire had destroyed so many homes — especially when there was such a robust firefighting response.
One of the first things that Cohen did was to listen to emergency dispatch tapes from the day of the fire. And as he listened, he began to notice a pattern. People were calling in about houses on fire long before the fire front ever reached their neighborhoods.
No comments:
Post a Comment